


we are all too young to die

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Kissing, Lesbians, Multifaceted queer identities, Other, Queer Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, d-slur as a self-descriptor, he/him lesbian Jon Sims, pointed capitalization
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:08:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25364374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: She kissed him, and he kissed her, gentle and then not-so, grasping and pressing and clinging, closing the space the Buried had forced between them.It had taken hours, inside the coffin, to get from pinkies clasped to fingers hooked together to fingers laced to palm to palm. Hours of scraping, dragging desperation, the earth around them so cold next to the warmth of another human body.It took moments to be skin-to-skin, now. Moments, damn the consequences, to be pressed mouth to mouth, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, stomach to stomach.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 8
Kudos: 75





	we are all too young to die

Jon was reading a Statement under his breath, lips moving without sound, when Daisy came into the room, cane in one hand, the other on the doorframe.

The room’s other chair, usually left clear for Daisy to sit in, was stacked with boxes.

“How heavy?” Daisy asked, already staring down the boxes like a matador before a bull.

Jon set the statement down. “Too heavy. Come sit with me.”

Daisy didn’t bother to argue. She leaned her cane against the desk, next to Jon’s, and perched herself on his lap.

It wouldn’t have worked before the Buried, but Daisy was thin enough now to cram herself onto the span of Jon’s thighs, like a cat into a box.

Jon shifted so she could rest her head on his collarbone, picking up the Statement again.

It helped, a little, to Know right away which of the collection of statements had actual nutritional value, so to speak. No more picking through bone piles for scraps—instinct drew him toward the actual meat.

He was very hungry.

Daisy leaned away from him, poking at things on his desk, picking up and putting down various fidget toys and office supplies.

Jon finished the Statement, then another, and was reaching for a third when Daisy knocked her head against the side of his neck, distracting him.

“Hm?” Jon acknowledged, scratching the back of her buzzed head.

“Why do you have a lesbian flag in your pen cup?”

Jon paused. He put the Statement back in its folder and set it back on the stack, tapping it on the desk to neaten the edges. “Because it’s less of a mouthful than ‘transfeminine lesbian, but gender, sex, and romance ambivilant’. I suppose I could just use ‘queer’, but a butch lesbian in an ice cream parlor called me a dyke once, and it stuck.”

“Huh,” Daisy replied. “I didn’t know.”

Jon shrugged. “I don’t tell people. It’s not really applicable, in a work setting.”

“You could wear a pronoun badge.”

Another shrug. “I don’t really care. They, he, she. They’re all just modes of address. The stubble’s a bit distinguishing, even with the skirts.”

“But you’re a lesbian.”

Jon nodded. “Basically.”

“What about Martin?”

There was a weighty pause.

“I don’t think it matters very much anymore,” Jon said, very quietly, fingers curling into the soft cotton of his skirt. “I—”

Daisy kissed him, gently, on the corner of the mouth.

Jon blinked, once and then again, and wrapped his arms around her.

“I was wondering,” Daisy murmured, between chaste pecks that Jon reciprocated only enough to make sure she’d keep going. “I thought you might be trans, but I wasn’t sure which direction.”

Jon slid a hand up Daisy’s tank-top, just to get more of his skin against hers. “It’s not really, mmm, any particular…” he trailed off as Daisy caught his bottom lip between her teeth, then picked back up when she let go. “...any particular _direction._ I don’t really care either way.”

“You’ve said,” Daisy murmured. She got her hands free from between them and groped at his chest. “Either on E or just softer than you look.”

“I was on the shot for a while. Haven’t refilled my prescription since I got out of the hospital,” Jon let her grope him a moment, then nudged her hands away. “Kiss me?”

Daisy brushed a lock of hair behind Jon’s ear. “Kiss _me,_ ” she insisted. 

Jon kissed her. Kissed her, and kissed her, until they both needed to break apart to breathe.

At some point during the kissing, they had laced their fingers together, holding on the way they had in the Buried.

Daisy nudged her forehead against Jon’s. Catlike, affectionate.

Jon slid his hand down from where it had slid up the middle of Daisy’s back, smoothing her tank-top back down. “We should probably… relocate this.”

“‘Sex-ambivalent’?” Daisy asked, pointedly not moving her free hand from under Jon’s sweater.

“It’s messy,” Jon muttered, eyelids fluttering. He Knew what was happening—a release of oxytocin giving him a sense of relief—but it was still blissfully unexpected. “Awkward. Easier to just…”

He trailed off, gestured vaguely at the lack of space between them.

Daisy kissed him again, turning in the chair to straddle him, pinning him against the back of it. 

(Jon Knew that she had scrubbed her hands six times this morning, trying to get dirt from out of the lines of her skin, Knew that the last time she had kissed someone was Basira, with blood in both their mouths, Knew that she wanted to rip and tear as much as she wanted to cradle and protect—)

Jon slotted his fingers into the space between her ribs, only moving for a moment when she pulled his sweater off over his head.

She kissed his throat, over the scar, kissed the soft place under his jaw, kissed the bridge of his nose and the unshaved hair between his eyebrows, kissed the worm scar that just missed his left eye, kissed the place where a pale branching web of scar tissue, like a lighting bolt, cut through the stubble on his jaw, kissed his mouth.

She kissed him, and he kissed her, gentle and then not-so, grasping and pressing and clinging, closing the space the Buried had forced between them.

It had taken hours, inside the coffin, to get from pinkies clasped to fingers hooked together to fingers laced to palm to palm. Hours of scraping, dragging desperation, the earth around them so cold next to the warmth of another human body.

It took moments to be skin-to-skin, now. Moments, damn the consequences, to be pressed mouth to mouth, chest to chest, thigh to thigh, stomach to stomach.

Jon slid them off the chair and behind the desk to pull his skirt down, while Daisy scrambled off his lap to get her shorts off, their fingers still laced together.

Daisy wore a bra under her tank-top, a soft thing with no wires to bruise or constrict, but Jon had only his shirt, and then his bare chest.

Tattooed down Jon’s side, across his ribs, read _‘We know what we are, but know not what we may be.’_

“Shakespeare,” Jon explained, when Daisy traced it with trembling fingertips. “Ironic, now, I think.”

“Did it hurt?”

Jon shut his eyes. “Yes.”

Daisy kissed him again, and again, until he was shaking with it, clinging to her. She made no move to reach between his legs, but Jon slipped his thigh between hers, for her to rock against.

It didn’t matter how long it was—Jon could have Known, but he only wanted to Know Daisy, the curves and angles of her body, the sounds she made into his mouth, the way her saliva tasted tinged with blood when she bit into his lower lip with canines just slightly too sharp.

She came, gasping, and Jon clutched her to his chest, fiercely possessive of the breaths that ached out of her chest.

“Do you want…?” she asked, when Jon released her.

He shook his head. They dressed methodically, comfortably, and stretched out there on the floor, Daisy sprawled on top of Jon.

With one clipped fingernail, Daisy traced the scar on Jon’s throat.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“We all did what we thought we had to do,” Jon replied, catching her hand. He brought it up to his cheek, then turned his face to kiss her palm.

Daisy flushed. “You sap.”

Jon ducked his head further into the spread of her fingers. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“You _sap_ ,” Daisy insisted, nudging his head back up to kiss him. “I want to keep you.”

Jon met her eyes for as long as he could manage, then tipped his head back, bearing his throat. “I hope you do.”


End file.
